The Hesychasm is an orientation of the Eastern monasticism
that search for the Christian perfection in union with God
through continual prayer. Together with prayer, considered
sometimes herself the goal, the end of perfection and "good
side" or the "only thing necessary" (Luke 10:24), the
Hesychasm put the accent on hesychia (silence, inner
concentration) and the guarding of the mind as means to arrive
to pure prayer and union with God. The monks dedicated to this
way of life pass through all other levels of monastic life,
beginning with the accomplishment of divine commandments
through a life of obedience and submission in a community.
The Hesychasm is addressed to everybody. Saint John
Chrysostome says: "When Christ says to follow the narrow
path he address every man. The monk as well as the lay person
can attain the same spiritual heights." Much more, the
Eastern Tradition do not separate the monks from the
hesychasts, one of the most remarkable traits of the Eastern
monasticism being even the inner unity over time and space.
This unity is explained through the fact that monasticism
before all is a tradition that is a transmission of living
reality and the persons that are linked organically with the
integral Tradition of the Church. Thus the Hesychasm is part
of the Tradition of the Church and not as a separate
tradition, as the heart is the most inner body of the body.
The hesychast dimension with the experience of seeing the
Thaboric Light and the prayer of the heart must be integrated
in the spiritual "Catholic" tradition of Orthodoxy. Outside of
it the Hesychasm becomes sterile and dry out.
The history of Hesychasm begins with the IV-V century as a
real movement of spiritual and theological renewal, through
the introduction of the Jesus Prayer as method that produce a
state of concentration and inner peace, in which the soul
listens and opens to God. Hesychia was practices at the
beginning by the desert fathers, that had as source of
inspiration Philocalia and who have acquired as discipline for
the development of the inner life, the continual invocation of
the Name of Jesus. The Prayer of the Heart known as well as
the Jesus Prayer or pure prayer consist of the words: "Lord
Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.", and
is based on the text from Luke 17:21: "The Kingdom of God
is within you.", and on the recommendation of Saint
Peter: "Pray without ceasing" and "Continue in
prayer" (Col. 4:2). The Apophtegmata of the desert Fathers
let understood, what later Evagrius Pontus and Makarios the
Great, Diadoch of Photice and especially Saint John of the
Ladder will define as way of union with God through hesychia,
guarding of the mind or heart and continual prayer. The actual
founder of Hesychasm is Saint John Climakos (+649), the author
of the spiritual "The Ladder of Paradise", in which
recommends the monologic prayer, that is the prayer reduced to
a single word: Jesus.
The Byzantine Church was familiar with the hesychastic form
of monasticism, continuing to exist in the Orthodox Church
today. The great monasteries produced mystics capable of
practising the purest forms of Hesychasm. Hesychasm flourished
in the Stoudios, in the tenth an eleventh centuries, in the
person of Saint Simeon the Pious and Saint Simeon the New
Theologian. A movement that was organized at Mount Athos in
the XII-XIVth centuries, the Hesychasm could not be separated
from the theology of the 'uncreated character of the Thaboric
light,' and from the direct experience of the glory of God.
From Athos was spread in the following centuries in the
monasteries from Serbia, Russia and Romania, influencing not
only a monastic life, also the liturgic. As method for
contemplative life, the Hesychasm is not separated from the
liturgical or sacramental spirituality. Indeed the hesychast
texts has been written for the monks and they are applied best
in conditions of retreat and solitude of the monasteries.
Athos, that collected the writing of the Philocalia, will say
that the Prayer of the heart pertains to everybody, to the
monks as well as to the lay people; this is why there are not
two systems of Orthodox spirituality. One of the fundamental
ideas of the Hesychasm is that the spiritual life, under
monastic or liturgic form, is not arbitrary, but needs a
'spiritual father.'
For the hesychast fathers the theory and practice of the
Prayer of Jesus, the silent meditation over the nae of Jesus
and the state of peace that this produce are not a goal in
themselves. Saint Simeon the New Theologian, talks about
conscience and the feeling of grace, and Saint Gregory Palamas
about the direct contemplation of glory of God through the
uncreated divine energies, as essential elements of hesychast
spirituality. If for the Hesychasm practised by Evagrius is
the intellectual contemplation and the monological prayer of
the mind, or the invocation of the Name of Jesus, other
Hesychast orientations, as for example that proposed by Saint
Makarios the Egyptian (sec. V), returns to a biblical
anthropology, insisting over the guarding of the heart.
Although in Orthodox spirituality, the heart (kardia),
is not the physical organ, but the spiritual centre of man,
created after the image of God, the most inner and truthful
ego, the inner altar in which one enters in the state of
kenosis and sacrifice and in which takes place the union with
Christ. The heart gives the unity of the human person.
Therefore the 'Prayer of the Heart' creates a state of
existence of unity and integrity of the person.
About the way that the prayer should be said
From the Fathers, some say all the phrase: Lord Jesus
Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, others the half:
Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, that is easier for
the inability of the mind, because she cannot say in an
intimate way, alone from itself: Lord Jesus, in purity
and perfectly, only by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12:3).
Otherwise will do that bubbling and as a child not being able
to say it articulate. He should not change often the words of
the prayer from neglect, but with delay, without interruption.
Other Fathers teach to make the prayer with the mouth,
others with the mind. I say with both. That sometimes the mind
weaken to say, becoming lazy, and other times the mouth. This
is why we have to pray with the mouth and mind. But we have to
say calmly and without noise, that the voice may not disturb
the feeling and the attention of the mind and to disturb it.
That until the mind, becoming accustomed with the work, will
advance in it and will take strength from the Spirit, to pray
completely and with strength. Then it is no more necessary to
say with the mouth, that it cannot be anymore. Then it is
possible to make all the work only with the mind." ( Saint
Gregory the Sinaite, About Prayer).
The word hesychastai current in Orient form
the Vth century characterised the monks that lived isolated or
in small groups in comparison with the great monastic
communities. They were also called hesychast monks that were
leading a life of solitude or contemplative even in the midst
of a coenobitic monastery. The word hesychia designates
the state of calm, peace, rest, of silence, resulted from the
ceasing of exterior causes of disturbance (noise, affairs,
wars) as from the absence of the inner agitation of the soul,
that has found the hierarchical equilibrium of his faculties.
In monastic vocabulary, hesychia is the peace of union of the
soul with God, the 'science of sciences' and the 'art of
arts.' Is before all an inner hesychia understood as a
'departure form the world,' need emphasised constantly be the
Apophthegms of the desert Fathers. But herself alone is not
sough. The exterior hesychia must be accompanied by
amerimnia or the lack of worries,
nepsis, attention or the guarding of the mind,
unceasing prayer to gain the true union of peace
with God. Hesychia creates rather a state in which are
practiced the virtues, among which the most important are the
purity of heart (apatheia), repentance
(metanoia), and especially sobriety, awakening or the
watchfulness of the heart (nepsis).
Of the lack of worries for the earthly things speak often
the Holy Gospel as well as the Fathers of the monastic
tradition. The great teacher of the 'amerimnia' is Saint John
of the Ladder, that in short formulations, synthesize it in a
memorable way:
"The good precursor of tranquillity is the lack of all
worries necessary or unnecessary. Because he who opens the
doors to the first will fall immediately in the second."
"A hair bother the eye; a small worry chasten the
tranquillity. Because the tranquillity is the detachment of
all the thoughts and the renunciation to all worries, even
justified."
Evagrius the Pontic in his De Oratione, identifies
even the effort of elimination of thoughts with prayer:
"You will not be able to pray purely as far as you are
entangled with the material things and disturbed with
unceasing worries."
But the teaching of Evagrius is in reality a synthesis of
older elements that of the ascetical teaching of the desert
Fathers and of the philosophic and mystical wisdom of the
alexandrinians especially Origen, what determines a whole
tradition in this direction.
The way through which is done the invisible fight against
thoughts bears to the hesychast the classical name of
nepsis (from where the expression of neptic Fathers)
that is translated with attention, vigilance, sobriety, the
guarding of the mind or the heart. The teaching about nepsis,
profound evangelical, is also a central idea of monastic
spirituality, as being the essential condition of the pure
prayer. She comes again as a motif in all the ascetical
writings, beginning with the desert Fathers. For them, the
guarding of the mind is necessary to any man if he wants not
to work in vain. Origen talks about a real 'battle of
thoughts' to which we have to stand, and the only way not to
fall under the attacks of demons is the guarding of heart or
mind. The analysis of the psychologic mechanism of the
temptation with its stages: suggestion, the inner dialogue
with the evil thought and the guilty consent that leads to
passion and captivity, made in evidence the importance of
guarding the mind as the 'guardian' at the door of the heart:
not to allow the conversation with the sinful suggestion but
to reject it from the first apparition. "Be the guardian of
your heart and of any thought that is presented put him this
question: 'Are you from ours or from our enemies"(Joshua
5:13) . "Look why Saint Makarios the Great say that all
the fight of man take place in thought.", and Hesychios
the Sinaite can to reduce all the ascesis to nepsis defined by
his as "a spiritual method...that, with the help of God and
through a sustained and firm effort, freed completely the man
from thoughts and passionate thoughts, as well as of evil
deeds.".
This rigorous discipline imposed to the heart and mind,
accompanied by bodily asceticism not less severe, with which
together form the praxis or the first of the ascetical life,
do not follow only the avoidance of sin, also she prepare the
interior climate for pure prayer the alone unites with God.
But as greater the ideal of the pure prayer is, more difficult
its realization is, because of the sin that destroyed the
harmony psycho-somatic of man and weakened the power of
concentration of attention in the heart. After the ancestral
sin, the inner unity of man, ensured by the heart as center
and source of active faculties of the mind and will, was
destroyed. Thus the mind (nous), deprived of his centre
is dispersed in a world that becomes to him from now on
exterior. This is why the diversity of the thoughts
(logismoi), and the forgiveness of continual
remembrance of God. The hesychast observed early that the
remedy for the liberation of mind form the pernicious
captivity of thoughts is that later one of them will call:
" the return to the original simplicity" through the
perseverant and ceaseless invocation of God in prayer."
We arrive thus to the need of the unceasing prayer, that in
the hesychast language was called "The Prater of the
Heart" or "The prayer of the Mind," fixe with the
time in the "Jesus Prayer." Even if this name
was renown after the hesychast movement of the XIVth century,
the Jesus Prayer, has a very ancient genesis, his origins
ascending to the first monks. They knew already short prayers
(monologismos), and emissive (ejected from the heart),
for the invocation of the Name of God. For Saint Makarios the
Great the spiritual life founded integrally on the Incarnation
of the Word of God. He develops in his Homilies the teaching
about the divine grace and prayer on the basis of an
anthropology profound biblical. For him the centre of the
human person is not the mind but the heart.
The heart master and governs over the body. When the
grace takes over the heart, becomes master over all the
members and over all the thoughts. Because there in the heart
is the mind and all the thoughts of the soul and his
confidence."
Abba Philemon also said this: "Thoughts about vain
things are sickness of an idle and sluggish soul. We must,
then as Scripture enjoins, guard our intellect diligently
(Prov 4:23), chanting undistractedly and with understanding,
and praying with a pure intellect. God wants us to show our
zeal for Him, first by our outward asceticism, and then by our
love and unceasing prayer; and He provides the path of
salvation. The only path leading to heaven is that of complete
stillness, the avoidance of all evil, the acquisition of
blessings, perfect love towards God and communion with Him in
holiness and righteousness. If a man has attained these things
he will soon ascend to a divine realm. Yet the person who
aspire to this realm must first mortify the earthly aspects
(Col. 3:5). For when our soul rejoices in the contemplation of
true goodness, it does not return to any of the passions
energized by sensual or bodily pleasure receives the
manifestation of God with pure and undefiled mind. It is only
after we have guarded ourselves rigorously, endured bodily
suffering and purified the soul, that God comes to dwell in
our hearts, making it possible for us to fulfil His
commandments without going astray. He Himself will then teach
us how to hold fast to His laws, sending forth His own
energies, like rays of the sun, through the grace of the
Spirit implanted in us. By way of trials and sufferings we
must purify the divine image in us in accordance with which we
possess intelligence and are able to receive understanding and
likeness of God; for it is by reforging our senses in the
furnace of our trials that we free them from all defilement
and assume our royal dignity." (Philokalia, Vol II,
Faber and Faber, London, 1990, pp. 349-50).
When the mind arrives to see itself, she became
transparent, looking through herself God. Saint Gregory of
Nyssa, commenting the Sixth Beatitude, says that the cleaned
heart see God, not an opposit person, but she see Him mirrored
in herself. The heart or the "Inner man" reflects
trough her nature God. But the sin, covering it, had covered
too He who is mirrored in her. As soon as we clean the heart,
we see the immage in which is reflected the model. He who
cleans himself, seeing himself, sees in himself God as some
see the sun in the miror, without to turn towards Him to see
Him in his Hypostasis.
But in what nature is this transparence, on the basis which
the mind, contemplating her, contemplate in the same time God?
The mind gathered in its intimacy, in the heart, finds their
God. Because our intimacy or our heart, when is found, is not
found empty, but in her indefinite bounderies is reflected the
presence of Christ. There is Christ, that has entered as
foreruner at the baptism, there is the Kingdom of God, found
in us, there is the house of Christ, where do not enter the
things of this world and who advances deeper in the heart and
comes closer to God. Introduceing the mind in his heart,
through the renounciation of all thoughts, he finds Christ who
enhabits her.
The ceasing of the activity of mind, that the descent in
the sould of the divine work rewuire, does not make
superfluous the efforts of the mind, that she was sharpened
and enalrged in comprehension more delicate and more
comprehensive. Because the exclusive work of God, which is
inaugurated in the moments of extasis of the present life and
will remain alone in the future life, is proportional with the
stage which the mind has attained through her efforts,
therefore is a function of the purification of passions,
without which the mind could not have been apt to be lifted to
the ecstatic love of God.
It is prayer that makes the mind to return from all things,
from all ideas. The self-transparence is gained by the mind
during prayer. The mental prayer searching in the beginning,
with the name of Jesus, the place of the heart, or the central
point of the subject, show us that the mind, even if is
preocupied mainly with God, she search God through intimacy
with the object himself. Thus the prayer searches in the heart
or in the heart Jesus and as much as enters and establish in
the heart more fully, as much is more dominated of the
certitude that she has found Jesus, that she is in front of
Him. Through the mental prayer, the amazing depths that pierce
through the mind after the discarding of all the contents form
her and after her return over herself, are revealed as depth
of the supreme subject different from us, in from of which we
are humble. The humbleness of prayer grows from the
simultaneous knowledge of our subject and of the Supreme
subject, different one of another, but in connection and
reciprocal penetration. In prayer, we feel around us and in us
with an absolute certitude the presence of the overhelming
Supreme Subject. This experience is as much truthful, more
full of certitude, as much as we feel that the presence of
reality, which surround us is an infinity, before which we are
nothing but little, and a supremacy, of which we depend
completely. This infinity and absolute supremacy overcomes us,
that the heart feel surrounded or filled completely by her,
realizing a perfect union, the heart swalowing the Lord and
the Lord the heart, both becoming one.
The rule of holy prayer with the mind, as have been
handed down from Father Joseph, written in 1810
After the bell has rung, rise at once making three
prostrations to the ground. Begin for the prayer: "Glory to
Thee our Lord, Glory to thee", "O heavenly King . . .," Holy
God, Holy Mighty, Holy Imortal have mercy on us (thrice)," and
after "Our Father . . .," the tropar of the Trinity: that is
four tropars: "Arising form sleep . . .," then "Let us bow
before our God . . ." (thrice), and the Psalm 50: "Have mercy
on me o God . . .," then the Creed: "I believe in one God . .
.." Then "O birthgiver of God . . .," "The Baptizer of Christ
. . ., pray for us," "Under your mercy . . .," then: "It is
truly meet to bless you o Theotokos . . .," and make the
otpust. Then begin the deep confession of all the sins, then:
"Relieve, unbound . . .", "And those that hate us . . .," then
50 great prostrations, or what you have from your spiritual
Father.
After that you gather all your senses, bow your head on the
left shoulder. Then close your nouth and put two fingers from
the right hand on the left side of the chest, above the heart.
Inhale the breath through the nose slowly, in the depth of the
chest. And there say: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have
mercy on me". Do not searc with the mind after the
breathing of the nose. There in the depth of the heart to
shadow saying the most loved name. Nor to imagine the heart,
neither something else. And so say only a quart of hour, not
overloading the mind, because you are a beginner.
Then go to Matins and they're finding a little corner, keep
the mentioned fingers over the coat, and there the head do not
bow, in order not to be observed. And there say with the mind
a quart of hour, and with the mouth not to cease, o, my dear
brother.
After the finishing of the Matins, coming to the cell, read
the akathist of the Mother of God and what you may know. And
if you want, allow the sleep a little. And as you awake,
immediately start the akathists. And again pray with the mind
a quart of hour. During the period of the Proskomede
(preparatory part of the Liturgy), again a quart of hour. Then
at the eight hour, again a quart of hour. After Aftersuper
prayer, a quart of hour. Then read what you know then go to
sleep. And so everyday five times. But the obediences of the
community not to disregard them, even if you may miss the
times shown, believeing that in obedience is the salvation.
Going to obedience, be preocupied with silence and be
preocupied with simplicity as well. And so little by little
you trains the mind, not overloading it.
But even when you may say with the tongue, to shadow with
the mind over the heart. Like this to follow always and
nothing to separate you from the love of Christ, nor the
problems of life, neither dejection.".
The physical mind being concentrated over the place of the
physical heart, the mind must not produce the imagine of the
physical heart. She must bedirected towards the spiritual
heart, through the spiritual center of the human being,
towards the self. Only this spiritual heart is the openess
towards the divine infinite, towards which must look the mind
too directed towards that spiritual heart. The heart can look
throughthe openess of the heart, or of the indefinite self,
the divine infinite, even if the words of the prayer are not
recited.
The tongue is not let to say these words without any
participation of the conscience. Is easier to keep the words
with the mouth than with the mind. Because to the keeping with
the mind is required a greater concentration. This is why,
when the mind cannot be kept to be concentrated to these
words, must be continued their saying at least with the mouth,
that require a less concentration. The mind must be allowed
free from this maximum concentration, before that she lose
herself, without wanting, from herself, because she is tired.
This method does not require only an identical repetition
of the prayer, but shows the way by which can progress to God,
or to more prayer with the mind, or to a more deep
concentration on her. It is the only method that shows that
progress to God through the heart. The aouthor is the
Hieromonk Joseph, the spiritual Father of the Varatec
Monastery, in Moldavia, Romania.
The intellectual activity consisting of thought and
intuition is called the intellect, and the power that
activates thought and intuition is likewise the intellect, and
this power Scripture also calls the heart. It is because the
intellect is pre-eminent among our inner powers that our soul
is deiform. In those devoted to prayer, espercialy to the
single-phrased Jesus Prayer, the intellect's noetic activity
is easely ordered and purified; but the power that produces
this activity cannot be purified unless all the soul's other
powers are also purified. For the soul is a single entity
possesing many powers. Thus if one of its powers is vitiated
the whole of it is defiled; for since the soul is singled, the
evil in one of its powers is communicated to all the rest. Now
since each of the soul's powers produces a different energy,
it is possible that with diligence one of these energies might
be temporarily purified; but the power in question will not
therefore be pure, since it communes with all the rest and so
it remains impure rather than pure. (Saint Gregory
Palamas, On Prayer and Purity of Heart)
From The ladder of Divine Ascent, by Saint John
Climakos
A hesychast is one who strives to enshrine what is
bodyless within the temple of the body, paradoxical though
this may sound. A hesychast is one who says, "I sleep but
my heart is watchful"(Song of Songs 5:2). Close the door of
you cell to the body, the door of your cell to the speech, and
your inner gate to evil spirits. Ascend into a watchtower - if
you know how to - and observe how and when and whence, and in
what numbers and in what form, the robers try to break in and
steal you grapes. When the watchman grows weary he stands up
and prays; then he sits down again and manfully resumes the
same task. Guarding against evil thoughts is one thing,
keeping watch over the intellect is another. The later differs
from the former as much as east form west, and is far more
difficult to attain. Were thieves see royal weapons at the
ready they do not attack the place lightly. Similarly,
spiritual robbers do not lightly try to plunder the person who
has enshrined prayer within the heart.(Steps 27 and 26).
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